Beyond Little Rock: The Origins and Legacies of the Central High Crisis

John A. Kirk

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155728850X ISBN 13: 9781557288509

Publisher: The University of Arkansas Press, 2007

Based on extensive archival work, private paper collections, and oral history, this book includes eight of John Kirk's essays, two of which have never been published before. Together, these essays locate the dramatic events of the crisis within the larger story of the African American struggle for freedom and equality in Arkansas, in the South, and in the nation. Examining key episodes in state history from before the New Deal to the present, Kirk covers a wide range of topics that include the historiography of the school crisis; the impact of the New Deal; early African American politics and mass mobilization; race, gender, and the civil rights movement; the role of white liberals in the struggle; and the intersections of race and city planning policy. Kirk unearths many previously neglected individuals, organizations, and episodes that shed powerful new light on the subject, and he provides a thought-provoking analytical framework for understanding them.

Review:

An authentic discussion must take place in order to challenge our miseducation and denial of the historical forces that helped to shape the present. John Kirk provides a record of activism that may catalyze the dialogue on the causes and cures of segregation. - From the foreword ""As this masterly collection of essays shows, no one is better equipped than John Kirk to put the Little Rock crisis in the context of the 'long' civil rights movement in Arkansas. No one better explores the nuances of divisions within both the black and white communities or better captures the agency of African Americans in the development of race relations in the state."" - Tony Badger, University of Cambridge, author of New Deal / New South

About the Author:

John A. Kirk is professor of United States history at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement: Controversies and Debates, Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970, for which he won the 2003 J. G. Ragsdale Book Award. Minnijean Brown Trickey made history in 1957 as one of the Little Rock Nine. In 1999 she received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Bill Clinton.